Home appliances, as electronic products equipped in homes, include refrigerators, air conditioners, cookers, and vacuum cleaner. Conventionally, in order to operate such home appliances, a method of approaching and directly manipulating them or remotely controlling them through a remote controller is used.
However, with the recent developments of communication technology, a technique for inputting a command for operating home appliances by using a voice and allowing the home appliances to recognize the inputted voice content and operate is introduced.
FIG. 1 is a view illustrating a configuration of a conventional home appliance and its operating method.
A conventional home appliance includes a voice recognition unit 2, a control unit 3, a memory 4, and a driving unit 5.
When a user makes a voice meaning a specific command, the home appliance 1 collects the spoken voice and interprets the collected voice by using the voice recognition unit 2.
As an interpretation result of the collected voice, a text corresponding to the voice may be extracted. The control unit 3 compares extracted first text information and second text information stored in the memory 4 to determine whether the text is matched.
When the first and second text information matches, the control unit 3 may recognize a predetermined function of the home appliance 1 corresponding to the second text information.
Then, the control unit 3 may operate the driving unit 5 on the basis of the recognized function.
However, when such a conventional home appliance is in use, a noise source generated from the surrounding may be wrongly recognized as a voice. Additionally, even when a user simply talks with other people near a home appliance without an intention of speaking a command for voice recognition, this may be also wrongly recognized. That is, the home appliance malfunctions.